Sunday, February 11, 2018

Castle Dome Mine Museum, Part 2

I was up before sunrise this morning. It was a chilly morning, around 15F cooler than yesterday morning, and rather breezy. It was a chore to motivate for my morning walk, but I got it done.

My cameras took the day off today. I had a lot more photos than I wanted to post in one blog entry yesterday, so here is Part 2.

Yesterday, I wrote about our drive from Stone Cabin, along the King's Canyon Road, then over McPherson Pass and down to vicinity of the Castle Dome Mine Museum. Today, I will write about our visit to the museum.

First, an overview of the Museum site from the access road. I saw a lot of solar panels, and a power generating windmill in action. It was a nice power setup for the mine and caretakers.

We parked and headed in to the museum entrance and gift shop. The museum fee is $15 / person (cash only), which we thought at first was rather steep. Afterwards, we decided is was a fair price.

There are 2 areas for the visitor to walk. The town museum is located behind the entrance. There is another lengthy walk through the mine area, which we had to postpone until our next visit. This mine area is out in the distance in this photo.

Inside town, a couple old auto bodies greet the visitor.

Up on a rail overhead, an ore trolley.

The "town" part of the museum includes more than 40 buildings with an impressive collection of mining and pioneer antiques. In the first cabin, we viewed a display of mine history and some old glassware.

Next, we looked over a re-creation of the town school house. Outside, the school bell looked to be a ringer hanging inside an old wheel rim or whatnot.

Around the corner, autoshop and auto related antiques. This mine was in operation well into the 1950's, so auto related antiques are not out of place.

Behind the autoshop, we found an old freight wagon. Turning back from the wagon, we view the town courtyard where the barber shop was located.

Next, we cross the front porch and enter the Mercantile. The Mercantile was well stocked, but the light was too low to get many good photos.

Down the boardwalk, we took a look at the church. The organ looks to need some TLC, but otherwise it all looked functional.

At the stage depot, we saw the 3:10 to Yuma was on schedule. However, we did not see train tracks in town so we guess there must have been a stage leaving for Yuma.

The blacksmith shop was really neat. There was a functional looking bellows and plenty of tools to shoe up the mule herd for mine work.

Next door to the blacksmith was the machine shop. There were a couple lathes and a metal saw, all belt driven from a central power source.

We walked through the town dressmaker shop. A nice inventory of dresses and notions was on display.

Out in the town courtyard, Barb poses by the Well Digger machine.

Castle Dome Mountain is seen in the background of the grand view of the town center.

A final parting shot of the museum from the parking lot.

The museum entrance fee is a bit spendy, but we were impressed with the collection and presentation of turn of the century mining and pioneer antiques.